Color development has been simplified and quickened as color photographic materials have come into wider use. At the same time, the desire for high quality images has increased.
Under these circumstances, photosensitive materials for color prints have been studied more widely with regard to speeding up photographic processing and improving color reproducibility than was the case in the past.
As to speeding up photographic processing, it recently has been found that silver halides with high chloride contents are effective for this purpose, and such halides are coming into prevailing use.
As to improving color reproducibility, many attempts have been made to decrease unnecessary absorptions by sharpening the respective absorption spectra of developed cyan, magenta and yellow dyes, which make up the colors of color prints. For instance, it has been reported that the absorption spectra of dyes formed by a coupling reaction with an oxidized product of a color developing agent are markedly sharpened by substituting pyrazoloazole magenta couplers for 5-pyrazolone magenta couplers, whereby the colors in the magenta to red regions and those in the blue region are rendered very clear. Detailed descriptions of such results can be found in JP-A-59-17956 (the term "JP-A" as, used herein means an "unexamined published Japanese patent application"), JP-A-60-172982, JP-A-61-65245, JP-A-61-65246, JP-A-61-147254, JP-A-62-89961, JP-A-60-262159, JP-A-61-28948, JP-A-62-24254, JP-A-62-87962, JP-A-62-92944, JP-A-62-201438, JP-A-62-201439, JP-A-62-174760, JP-A-62-174761, and JP-A-62-109050.
Also, attempts have been made to improve yellow couplers by reducing unnecessary absorptions in the magenta region through proper choice of the kind and the position of substituent groups. As described in JP-A-63-123047 and JP-A-63-2415, for example, such attempts have succeeded in enhancing color reproducibility.
However, yellow couplers whose absorption bands have been shifted to shorter wavelengths by proper choice and positioning of substituent groups as described above must be used in relatively high concentrations compared to conventional yellow couplers, because the yellow dyes produced from the absorption-shifted couplers have low visual density to the human eye. Therefore, the absorption-shifted yellow couplers require the use of higher contrast emulsions. When they are used in rapidly processable photosensitive materials employing silver halides with high chloride contents, sufficiently high contrast and developed color density are not always achieved, so further improvements are desired.